


to keep you alive

by blindbatalex



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Boston Bruins, But otherwise, Established Relationship, Everybody Lives, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Oh also, Violence, Whump, but mostly anti-babcock hahah, criminal / spy au, extremely anti-leafs, i killed kadri offscreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23377423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: Play it right.  Brad just has to play this right and they can both get out of here.  Patrice’s jaw is clenched tight—whether from anger or to keep the pain down, Brad doesn’t know.  He is just looking at Brad, like he never has before—the way you look at a monster.Brad has to think on his feet when the head of another criminal organization hands him a beaten up Special Agent Bergeron, i.e. his boyfriend, as a gift for him to finish off--even if it comes at great cost to both himself and Patrice.
Relationships: Patrice Bergeron/Brad Marchand
Comments: 28
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluejay141519](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluejay141519/gifts).

> @ Blue ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE. You said I wish there was more Patrice whump, I remembered I had this WIP gathering cobwebs in my Google Docs. Hope you like it friend.

The day Patrice came crashing into their lives, Brad was losing at darts to Torey. Patrice had walked into their bar, and, eschewing all pleasantries introduced himself with “I am Special Agent Patrice Bergeron with the FBI.”

Up to that point, it had been a perfectly unremarkable afternoon. Then in a moment, four guns were drawn at the same time, all pointing at Patrice’s head, the tension so thick in the dimly lit bar you could feel it in the air. You could say that Brad and his men were not the biggest fans of the federal government.

Brad for his part kept his eyes on the dart board. If he got at least a double 14 he would close the gap to Torey. 

Patrice raised his hands, palms facing outward. “I don’t mean harm,” he continued as direct as he started. “I have come to make an offer. We want to take down Stamkos and his men but we can’t get any good intel from their organization. We want to enlist your help.”

Brad took his shot and got a single 9 instead. Goddamn. He hates losing to Torey.

He turned now to get a better look at this Special Agent Bergeron and—okay, wow. If Bergeron wasn’t the most beautiful man Brad has ever seen, he was up there, and beholding beautiful man is something of a favorite pastime for Brad. He was wearing a dark blue suit—conservative enough for the Bureau, but it was elegant. There was music in the way it hugged his frame and accentuated every lovely detail of his toned body. A light beard framed his face and he had—he still has—eyelashes for days.

Patrice never once broke eye contact. 

“Okay,” Brad said. 

He couldn’t tell whether Patrice’s eyes were brown or hazel in the perpetually dim light of the bar. It felt important to know. Later he would spend considerable time trying to puzzle it out, before coming to the conclusion they change with the light but always carry that spark in them—kind and funny and sharp as a whip.

“Okay?” Torey and Patrice asked almost at the same time, with the same degree of surprise.

Brad picked up the dart from where it was sticking to the board and walked back, winking at Torey on the way.

“My last shot was interrupted by this one,” he told Torey, gesturing to Patrice with his head, “so I get a do over.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he told Patrice, though at this point he was _Agent Bergeron_, while getting into position to throw again, “would you prefer if I said no?

He took his shot. Landed a triple 9. Good enough.

“I was expecting a negotiation.” Jake’s finger pressed that much more against the trigger when Agent Bergeron tried to lower his hands. He promptly raised them back up again. “Demands. A full rundown of what we are asking.”

Brad shrugged.

He told Patrice he was cute, which is true. But then, when Torey groaned next to him, he had to give a mini-speech about how their and FBI’s interests were aligned in this matter. Brad hates speeches that explain his reasoning and character motivations. They make him sound like a villain from a cheap action movie. And everyone knows that’s how you give the purported ‘heroes’ enough time to come up with a cunning plan and take you down. He was also a little heartbroken that Torey didn’t know him well enough to trust that he wouldn’t make decisions like cooperating with the FBI just with his dick.

But needs must.

You see, the Lightning, as Stamkos’ men call themselves, were getting too strong. They don’t value the art of negotiation and exchanged favors which are Brad’s bread and butter. One too many man he put in contact with them ended up dead.

Speaking of his dick, though.

“I do have a demand,” Brad added. “I will help you, but I only speak with you. No one else.”

He wondered whether Patrice would do it if Brad asked him to fuck him in return for Brad’s cooperation. Whether his sense of duty went that deep.

“That can be arranged,” Patrice replied without missing much of a beat and Brad concluded that he would. He still wonders sometimes, whether that is what Patrice is doing now—whether there are files on him piling in an FBI office by the day as Patrice meticulously records their interactions and rummages through the house when Brad is in the shower. Whether he is a mission.

“And every time we meet he has to bring us dessert,” Jake added from behind the bar. “High quality dessert.”

Patrice’s frown deepened at that and Brad smiled. He had a great feeling about this. 

“You heard the man. If you want my help I only speak to you and every time we meet you have to bring us dessert.”

*

That is a far cry from today—from this decrepit old warehouse he has found himself in. Babcock who leads the pesky, deeply unpleasant and generally unsuccessful criminal group whose fortunes are reflected by their choice of name—who calls themselves _the Leafs_?—gave him a call out of the blue and said he had a gift for Brad. His tone was jovial, paternal, but there was something in it that put the hairs on Brad’s neck on edge.

He almost wanted to tell Patrice, ask if the FBI knows anything, except Patrice was in Vermont for a mini-getaway with no access to technology—so that he could ‘disconnect and recharge for a bit,’ was what he said. 

Well, he was supposed to be in Vermont.

The second floor of the warehouse they are in is a large, open space. Dust crisscrosses the streaks of light that fall from the boarded up windows; large beams run across the ceiling. There are six of Babcock’s men—two sitting in plastic chairs the other four on their feet in an almost circle.

The exterior of the building was once red brick but is now a sickly, patchy light brown. Brad could barely make out the faded white letters up top, advertising quality paints and varnishes when Babcock first pulled the SUV here and they got out.

Brad almost said ‘wanted a place that symbolized the state of your organization?’ but he held his tongue. If there is a time to antagonize Babcock, in the middle of nowhere and surrounded with Babcock’s men is not it. Even he knows that.

And Babcock is a reasonable man. He knows what would happen if he killed Brad, at the very least would have the sense to do it more discreetly. Brad can talk his way out of anything. But at the same time layers of graffiti cover the walls and behind the friendliness he exudes there is a sinister edge to Babcock’s smile, a glint to his eye that tells Brad to run.

And for good reason, as it turns out. 

Because in the middle of the room is Patrice.

Special Agent Patrice Bergeron. Nameless Fed turned business associate turned friend turned lover. Kind of half his world these days, hard as the concept would have been to imagine a year ago.

And he is hanging by his wrists from a rope that descends from a beam, his toes barely touching the floor.

Babcock flashes him a sickening smile.

“I know you like to play target practice with government agents. This one won’t talk, I owe you from Gloucester last year, so—consider him a gift.”

One of Patrice’s eyes is shut close. His lip is split and there is a gag in his mouth; his face is streaked with dried blood. His head jerks up from where it was leaning against his right arm—as if he didn’t trust to hold it up on his own—and he looks at Brad with his good eye, with surprise and recognition. 

Babcock offers Brad his gun. 

“He is all yours.”

There are seven of them. Brad is a good shot. If he drew now he could take out—Babcock and Matthews easy, maybe even Tavares—but the space is too open. He can’t take cover and even if he could, Patrice is a sitting duck in the middle. He would get caught in the crossfire.

He reaches with a numb hand to take the gun, mind working in overdrive.

They have Patrice. He was supposed to have left for Vermont two days ago—have they had him the entire time? They have Patrice and he is hurt.

Babcock draws the gun back before he can take it.

“Although,” he adds, as if the thought just occurred to him. “Normally when you play with agents it’s not the ones you work with. You sleep with. Don’t know if that will be a problem here.”

Brad looks at him, blood turning to ice in his veins.

Very few people know he and Patrice are together; only the people who were in the bar that day know that Patrice is a Fed. To everyone else, Patrice is a guy from Quebec who came to Boston to make a fresh start.

Except they know. Babcock, somehow, impossibly, knows.

Babcock smiles sweetly, to drive the obvious point home.

“Oh yes, we know.”

Shit.

_Shit. Shit. Shit-_

The thing is FBI has no idea Patrice was taken either. Agents Rask as well as Chara would have been all over Brad if they had. He was supposed to be in fucking Vermont.

_Agent Rask._

“Know what?” Brad asks loudly, taking a couple of steps towards Patrice, thinking on his feet. While turned away from most of the Leafs, he brings a discreet hand to his pocket to hit dial—Jake thought it was a hilarious prank to save Rask in the speed dial of this burner under “my love” this morning. Jake might have just saved their lives.

“-that I used the FBI because I wanted Cooper and Stamkos gone?”

That was how it started after all. Patrice is in an undershirt that was once white and jeans. He tracks Brad’s movements across the space.

“Government offers you a Christmas present with a bow on top and you don’t turn it down. And you know—you fucking well know Lightning was getting too strong for their own good, for yours as well as mine.”

Patrice’s left shoulder is hanging at an odd angle—dislocated—which must be incredibly painful. The dried blood on his undershirt seems to be from his broken nose and there is very little on the floor which is good, but his forehead is clammy with sweat when it’s chilly in the warehouse and his breaths are coming in quick, short gasps, which—yeah, not good.

_If you fucking let this go to voicemail, Tuukka._

He turns around to face Babcock again. He’s just gotta stall. Make a big speech, movie-villain style.

“Unless you are trying to-” Brad laughs, throwing his head back, “-oh I don’t know, punish me by kidnapping Agent Bergeron here?—for Kadri.”

Babcock doesn’t even attempt a smile this time.

“You let the Feds massacre him.”

So they know about that too. He has to have a mole in the organization. Someone close to him. When he finds out who it is—and he will find out—he will make sure they die very slowly and at his hand. He will take his time. He will make them suffer.

Brad looks him in the eye.

“I did you a favor. He was a liability.”

“I deal with my own men,” Babcock spits back. “Not you.”

So this is what it’s all about. Fucking Kadri fucking with him even in death.

Brad takes in a breath, sounds as sweet as he can.

“Mike,” he says, “you know as well as I do that Kadri was getting sloppy. It was only a matter of time before the Feds caught onto him and you know he would crack under pressure in less than an hour, and where would you be then?” He cocks his head towards Patrice. “Yes, sure, I needed to give them something to gain the bastards’ trust but I made sure they didn’t take him alive. You should be thanking me.”

Handing the Feds Kadri had been a show of goodwill, when Brad and his men realized just how useful this cooperation with the FBI could be for their business. The bastard was getting sloppy, had killed a Fed or two, and they had bodies. And Brad had never liked him. 

He runs two fingers alongside Patrice’s jaw, studying his face. Patrice flinches away from the contact, as if he’s been touched by something diseased and vile. His skin is cold to the touch and the only color in it comes from the dried blood, neither of which bodes well. “So trigger happy,” he says sweetly. They need to get Patrice help. He needs the FBI to pull its act together.

It’s true, too—he could not afford to let the Feds take Kadri alive so he made sure they didn’t. And Patrice behind the immaculate beard and sharp features, looked like shit for an entire week. Admitted over coffee, his voice so very quiet, that every life he took weighed on his soul, felt as if it was dragging him down one step closer to hell—didn’t matter who it is.

By that measure, Brad’s soul would already be in the lowest circle. He did not tell Patrice this.

He pulls himself to the present. He has to hold it together.

Babcock’s eyes are narrowed but he knows Brad has a point. He looks around the room. Matthews is still ready to lunge at him but he catches Tavares faintly nod. He almost has the higher ground.

“Do you know-” Babcock asks, changing the subject. He is looking past Brad’s shoulder—addressing Patrice, Brad realizes. “Marchy here—whenever someone captures a government agent, CIA, FBI, NSA—you pick the acronym—when we are done we call Brad. He has fun with your kind—sometimes empties a whole magazine into them just for kicks. Has he told you that?”

Patrice’s eye flicks from Babcock to Brad, something fierce flashing across it. Brad burns under its gaze.

Patrice doesn’t—didn’t—know. Brad meant to tell him. He wanted to. Lay in the dark sleepless many nights thinking whether—he must have, dealt with people Patrice knew. He’s killed too many people not to. But it was from a different era of his life, where all law enforcement were agents of evil, and Brad has always been a coward. He hasn’t told Patrice because he didn’t want Patrice to hate him.

“Are you going to do that with Agent Bergeron or—your excuses aside—has he made an honest man out of you yet?”

Play it right. Brad just has to play this right and they can both get out of here. Patrice’s jaw is clenched tight—whether from anger or to keep the pain down, Brad doesn’t know. He is just looking at Brad, like he never has before—the way you look at a monster.

Brad turns his attention to Babcock and lets out a hearty laugh, as if the man just told a hilarious joke. He lets the last of the laughter die down before he speaks, his voice now cold as ice. He has never let go of Babcock’s gaze.

“You think—what? That I spend my free time drawing hearts around Bergy’s name in my journal? That Bergy and I here have a little star-crossed lovers act going on?”

He sneers. He takes one look at Patrice, forcing disgust onto his face, before he turns his attention back to Babcock.

“You are losing your edge, Mike. They sent me a gullible agent who is into dick and I used him. You have any idea how much intel you can get from a special agent who thinks you are in love?”

“I cooked for him,” he continues, and he has. “Three course meal and he almost shot me for it.”

“Freeze,” Patrice commanded from behind him that day, in that sexy FBI voice of his as the safety of a gun clicked off. 

Brad was just finishing up making dinner. The pasta turned out perfect, the salad looked positively Instagrammable, the table was all but set and he was just on time. 

Well, almost.

Brad raised his hands above his head, holding two candles in one of them.

“Candles—are they a nice touch or too much?” he asked. Since his back was turned to Patrice, there was nothing stopping him from grinning to his heart’s content.

“Brad?” 

Months they had been working together and the open surprise in Patrice’s voice had yet to stop being so delicious. Months since that day and it still hasn’t. Well- not like today. Never like today.

“You sound like you aren’t glad to see me.”

Brad had made his voice sound extra sad but Patrice did not fall for it. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” he asked instead, as if the answer was not obvious.

Brad took a single slow step to his right—he was yet to hear the gun’s safety clicking back on—so as not to obscure the table.

“Making dinner of course.”

“I—you broke into my house,” Patrice said, still stuck on the same point. 

Brad risked turning around to face him and finally Patrice took it as a cue to lower the gun. That gentle frustration in his eyes when he was bothered but too polite to take direct action was another expression that looked good on Patrice.

Brad shrugged to get some more of it.

“Well you get your panties in a twist when I break into other people’s houses, so.”

“So you broke into mine.”

Brad nodded happily. Finally Patrice was getting it.

“...and made dinner.”

“Simple affair, really. Angel hair pasta with blue crab, a cold cucumber soup, and an excellent vintage of Merlot. But ask anyone—my pasta is to die for.”

Patrice was still standing in the same spot he yelled at Brad to freeze, gun still in hand. Still frowning. 

“And you did this because…?”

He can be quite stupid really for someone so smart.

But if Brad had to spell it out, he had to spell it out.

“To thank you for saving my life.”

Patrice opened his mouth. Closed it without saying anything. He opened it again and said “you didn’t have to,” on the second try.

There had been an explosion by the harbor the day before, set up by Stamkos’ men. Patrice had pulled him out of the water, revived him, held him thrashing and coughing water until help arrived. Rode in the ambulance under a bullshit excuse of ‘taking Brad’s safety seriously,’ held his hand.

Brad had to. He wanted to. He’d been rubbing at his hand the whole day; he could still feel Patrice’s phantom touch, telling him to hang in there, giving him strength.

He has to continue.

“I made out with him on his couch after dessert and whispered it was okay as he looked at me with these wide eyes, caught between guilt and longing.”

Once they had drawn apart—and it had been such a sweet, chaste kiss—they were too afraid to move. As if a single motion, a single word, and the magic would break and the real world would come crashing down. A criminal in love with an FBI agent. That was—is—a story guaranteed to end in tragedy.

“I let him fuck me for months. Laid in his arms at night and sighed, dreaming of the oh-so-domestic life we could never have, kept my dick in my pants in case he got offended—all for information.”

He would tell Patrice of it sometimes, in hushed whispers, only when he was sure Patrice was asleep. A small house on the coast somewhere far away—maybe a remote town in Italy and Greece—a life where he wasn’t a criminal and Patrice wasn’t law enforcement. A life they could openly share.

“You are-” Brad shakes his head, “-a lot more stupid than I thought.”

“So you will shoot him?”

The deep creases on Babcock’s face are lined with disgust. He doesn’t like men who make fools of him. He doesn’t like to be shown wrong.

“No.”

Fingers curl into a fist. Brad turns around and strikes Patrice in the stomach without warning. Knuckles connect with skin in a gut-churning, soft thud. He pulls his punch—as much as he can—and still Patrice’s body twists in agony as he lets out a muffled gasp. _He must have internal bleeding._ His body, almost limp, sways back and forth, where he is hanging from a ceiling beam by his wrists.

Any time now, Agent Rask. Any time.

Babcock’s expression has changed. Brad has his attention now. He just needs to not fuck this up.

_Stall._

“Special Agent Patrice Bergeron. Always perfect, always a saint. Well, I’m sick of his goody two shoes act and I’m sick of sucking his dick. So no, I won’t shoot him. He doesn’t get to die that easy.”

Now it’s Babcock’s turn to laugh heartily—his distaste for Brad once again hidden under a pretend, paternal joviality.

“That’s the Marchy I know. Thought you’d turned soft. So, what will you do with him?”

Brad grins. He could kill them all right now. He wants to kill them all right now, preferably with his bare hands. Watch their faces as his fingers squeeze life out of them.

But he can’t waver. Can’t let his voice—his face—crack for a second or Babcock will be onto him.

“Nothing. Just leave him here to die slowly of his injuries, cold and alone, knowing he’s been played and not a single soul knows where he is or gives a damn.”

Babcock raises an eyebrow. He looks at Matthews and then at Tavares.

Brad punches Patrice again, to drive his point home. He goes more to the right this time while still avoiding the ribs, in case his side hurts a little less. Patrice still shudders in pain, his body spasming as he tries to hold it down. And through it all—the way he is looking at Brad. He can’t talk due to the gag in his mouth and he doesn’t need to. Brad dies a thousand deaths under the weight of his gaze.

He thinks his voice will break when he speaks.

“FBI! Drop your weapons!”

Fucking finally.

Brad exhales for the first time since he set foot in this horrible warehouse. Federal agents swarm the room. The Leafs do as they are told, someone is already getting to Patrice, there is a flash of movement in front of him and the butt of a gun connects with his face, hard. The impact sends him reeling to the floor. A knee comes pushing down between his shoulder blades before he has the chance to turn around and Agent Rask—who else—shouts at him not to move as he cuffs Brad’s hands.

They manhandle him out of the room and into a car and Brad lets them. The last thing he sees—the only thing he can see—is Patrice collapsing into the arms of Agent Chara when another agent unties his hands.

*

They throw him into an individual holding cell. He sits in the corner, knees drawn to his chest, with only the dull pain from his face Rask hit him to tell the time by. 

He thinks back to those early days with Patrice when he was still very much so Special Agent Bergeron.

In this memory Brad is making a big deal about the Dunkin’s box Patrice put on their coffee table. ‘Their’ part is something of a figure of speech—they did, after all, break into this house to hold this meeting.

“Did you seriously bring us Dunkin donuts?” Brad asks, examining the box. Agent Bergeron’s frown is so delightful he has to try hard to stick to his offended act.

“I thought we were very clear,” Jake supplies from the leather armchair he is perched on. He is enjoying this almost but not quite as much as Brad.

“Like you asked I brought you-”

“We said _high-quality_. You need to at least go Union Square if you are going to bring donuts.”

Patrice looks between the two of them. “Noted for the next time,” he says with a smile, the frustration from earlier replaced by almost magic with a friendliness. Brad is beginning to see why the FBI sent this particular agent to him, beyond the looks.

Still, he likes testing the limits of things, seeing where they break. So when Patrice sits next to him on the sofa with a woefully thin file on Stamkos Brad swats at his hand. 

“A-a-a. We don’t talk to you unless you bring us high-quality dessert. That is the deal. You did not bring us high-quality dessert.”

A muscle in Patrice’s jaw twitches at that, almost imperceptibly so. But he gets up and gets ready to go like the good soldier that he is. 

Brad appreciates the curve of his firm ass from where he sits. Stamkos is a scum of a man but Brad loves him all of a sudden, given the gift he brought Brad’s way.

Later they had a good laugh about that day, when it came up in conversation. “You are such an asshole,” Patrice huffed but he was smiling even as he shook his head, didn’t look at all bothered in his old Quantico t-shirt at the breakfast table.

“Marchand.”

Agent Rask’s voice brings him back to the present. Brad rises to his feet.

“Is-?”

Rask shakes his head. “Not here.” He is wearing a grim, tight-lipped, furious expression, then again- Then again, perhaps it means nothing because that’s what Patrice’s sour-mannered colleague usually looks like.

Rask cuffs him and brings him into an interrogation room. There is only a single thing Brad can think of.

“Patrice- is he okay?”

_‘You scared me. When I pulled you out of the water and you weren’t breathing.’_ It had been a week since that night at the harbor, about six days since they started—hooking up? They aren’t dating, that’s for sure, but Brad has never had conversations on life-and-death at 2am with people he is hooking up with. They are sitting in the balcony. Patrice’s eyes are lost somewhere on the city line. Brad finds his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. It’s been quite the experience for him too, especially when he calmed down and had the chance to think back on how close he came to dying, and it’s touching in a way he can’t put to words that Patrice is telling him this, now. He smiles. _‘It’s okay. Much like a pest, you will find that I am extremely hard to kill.’_

Rask shakes his head.

“Died on the way to the hospital from his injuries.”

Brad hears the words, he does, but they refuse to make their way to his brain. Patrice couldn’t have. He was still conscious when the FBI got there. Brad made sure they got help in time. The image of Agent Chara’s arms closing around Patrice to support his (dead) weight is playing in his head in a loop. He doesn’t realize—not until his vision goes blurry—that he is shaking, sobs wracking his body as he cries. 

And the last thing he told Patrice was that he had been played, and the last thing he did to Patrice was to hit him when he was already dying.

Rask inhales sharply and rolls his eyes.

“He has some internal bleeding so they got him into surgery but they think we got to him in time.”

Brad frowns. He can’t exactly trust his hearing right now. He looks up at Rask, willing him to repeat what he said, to tell him everything, and never wanting to hear another word from his mouth, in case he heard it wrong.

Rask awkwardly pushes a box of Kleenex towards Brad. Fat good they will do, with Brad’s hands cuffed behind his back and it hardly registers.

“He is alive.”

He barely hears his own voice.

Patrice is alive.

He is looking at Rask for him to deny it, contradict it, bring his world crashing down again.

Rask looks uncomfortable, probably because the head of a criminal family is sobbing openly in his interrogation room.

“Just had to test your reaction to make sure you didn’t butt dial me by accident,” he adds somewhat apologetically. Oh, is that so? 

Rask sighs.

“You two are really in love aren’t you? Wait, no- don’t answer that.”

Brad is going to knife him the second he is out of these cuffs. But. Patrice is alive. He lets out a wet laugh. 

Patrice will be okay.


	2. Chapter 2

Brad can hear conversation spilling into the hallway from the ajar door. Patrice’s voice is strained, soft—when he laughs it’s followed by coughing and an audible wince. Chara tells someone off, presumably the responsible party. 

It makes Brad smile (Patrice is okay, awake, joking) and it makes the invisible boulder pressing down on his ribcage that much heavier.

He takes in a deep breath and walks inside. He has spent two full days tiptoeing around the hospital, desperate for updates on Patrice’s condition, desperate to sit by his bedside and never move, and too scared to see him except for just once, when he had come out of surgery and was still sedated.

Conversation stops as if cut by a knife. All heads turn to him. Patrice’s smile first freezes on his face and then disappears altogether.

“Can you excuse us?” he tells Chara, Rask, and another guy Brad does not know. 

They nod and file out of the room in sharp, quick motions.

Brad sits in the chair Rask had, drawn up close to the bed. Patrice’s one eye is still mostly shut closed; stitches and bandages crisscross his face, and he is pale but he looks- okay. Better. More alert and alive since the last couple of times Brad saw him.

His mouth is too dry and he can barely breathe but that alone fills him with relief.

Patrice is alright.

“How are you doing?” Patrice asks, voice raspy and cracked.

Brad laughs on instinct.

“How am _I_ doing?”

Patrice raises his hand, searching for Brad’s, before he tucks it back under the covers with a slight frown. 

“Brad, what you did-”

“I had to.” Brad blurts it out. He needs Patrice to understand. To know. “If Babcock got the smallest inkling of how much I love you he would have killed you on the spot and made me watch, Bergy. I had to stall for time. I had to sell it but I didn’t mean any of it. I am so, so sorry.”

Patrice smiles. 

“I- yeah. I talked to Tuukka. I know now.”

“You do?”

_Did he tell you about the part he said you were dead or the part when I broke down in an interrogation room?_ Brad cannot bring himself to ask that.

He reaches out, only half aware of what he is doing, but Patrice draws back sharply before Brad’s hand comes even close to his face. He grimaces with pain caused by the jolt. Brad withdraws into the chair as if he has been burned.

“I’m sorry,” Patrice says through his teeth, still in pain. “It’s going to take me a minute before I can-” He shakes his head. He looks exhausted.

Brad nods.

“Of course.”

His voice sounds distant—as if it belongs to someone else—for the ringing in his ears. The monitor Patrice is hooked up to has started beeping more aggressively. Brad stands up. It’s time for him to leave. He buries his hands in his pockets so neither of them can see how badly they are shaking.

“Could you call the nurse on your way out?” Patrice asks, breathless.

“You got it, man. Just get some rest.”

He is at the door when Patrice calls after him.

“Hey, Brad?”

He turns back and has to force himself to look Patrice in the eye.

“Yeah?”

Patrice smiles, it’s tired, and creaking, but it is genuine. Brad estimates that he has about two minutes before he breaks down again.

“When I’m out of here, I’ll break into your apartment and cook for you. To say thanks for saving my life.”

Tears are already threatening to overtake Brad. Still, he makes himself smile back.

“Don’t delude yourself Agent Bergeron. You can’t cook for shit.”

“Never underestimate your opponent.”

Brad laughs a little at that, despite himself.

“We are opponents now, are we?”

Patrice shakes his head, even as he lets his eyes drift closed. His voice is warmer than Brad deserves.

“No.”

Brad practically runs to the nurses’ station to get somebody, and tells himself it’s more because Patrice doesn’t look good and less because he is running away, guilt and shame weighing him down like lead in every step.

*

He is trying his best to make his mind focus on the latest business deal Torey is telling him about when one of his burner phones buzzes a couple of hours later.

There is a single text on it from an unsaved number he knows is Patrice.

**When you said how much you loved me earlier—I love you too.**

Brad laughs out loud, to Torey’s chagrin. In truth, it comes out more as a choked off sob but they both ignore that.

“FBI agents-” Brad shakes his head, pulling himself together. They have a long way ahead. Brad has a mole in his organization and a mess to sort out with the remaining Leafs. They still haven’t discussed Brad’s past and the things he has done to law enforcement agents. Patrice can’t bear to have Brad so much as touch him. But. 

There is a text in his phone and it is from Patrice and it says I love you. And that is not nothing.

“No manners in them whatsoever,” he tells Torey. “Everyone and their grandmother knows you are not supposed to say the first I love you over text.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! If you liked the fic, please drop me a word below. Comments are what make the hours and hours that go into writing worth it, and what keeps me coming back for more.
> 
> I'm also @blindbatalex on tumblr if you wanna give me a shout over there!


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